Tag: western

Pink Heat

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★½
“Die Hard in a saloon.”

You know you’re deep into one-man, to put it mildly, film-making territory, when the same name gets 7½ of the first 10 credits (one is shared). That’s spreading your talents thin, even if you are Steven Spielberg. And Sean LaFollette definitely isn’t Spielberg. The story is told in flashback, with the heroine Elizabeth (Burgess) the proud recipient of two pink-handled revolvers for her birthday. While she’s off getting her gun-belt, the family saloon is invaded by a group of out of town criminals, who take the rest of her family hostage, and shoot her grandfather dead. Fortunately, Elizabeth takes after her late mother, who was a crack-shot, and is therefore in a good position to pick apart the perpetrators.

Die Hard? More like Die Limp. For there’s almost nothing here that reaches the level of competent, from the ill-conceived structure through to the ridiculous and pointless voice-over. This includes such gems as, after Elizabeth rescues her boyfriend, “I ran to Mark. I was relieved to know that he was alive.” That should be a script direction, not a voice-over: “Elizabeth runs to Mark, clearly relieved to know he is alive.” Then there’s the heroine’s style of gun-fighting, which would be better suited to a primary school playground than taking on hardened criminals. A gun in each hand, she thrusts her arms forward alternately while firing, a hardly credible approach extremely unlikely to generate accuracy, and with the unfortunate effect of making her resemble a train engine in motion. And we are provided with absolutely no explanation for the criminals’ actions: what exactly are they trying to achieve by the taking of hostages?

Probably the most aggravating part of the entire production, however, was the music – a LaFollette composition, naturally. He seems to be going for a minimalist, John Carpenter vibe. It doesn’t work, and sounds simply as if he was only able to afford half the notes on a musical scale. Because the soundtrack consists of a series of pieces, in which four notes are repeated in strict succession, for however long is necessary for the scene in question. Even in a film of low standards like this, it’s quite outstandingly bad, and if it hadn’t been LaFollette the director giving an approving nod to LaFollette the composer’s work, would surely have rapidly resulting in a replacement being sought.

Positives are not easy to find. I did quite like the opening, which feels like a pastiche of Western movie cliches… because that’s exactly what it’s intended to be, since it’s a show put on for tourists. Burgess does at least look the part – albeit rather more so when attired in her mother’s long coat and Stetson, rather than wandering the house in some fairly gratuitous underwear! However, you’ll be hard pushed to remain interested through to a climactic battle which includes the bad guy pausing in the middle of a fight for his life to take a swig of whisky, before a final resolution which literally had me rolling my eyes in my head.

Dir: Sean LaFollette
Star: Jordan Burgess, Adam Joseph Lopez, Joey Catalano

The Sheriff’s Surrender, by Susan Page Davis

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Having started our acquaintance with the Ladies Shooting Club trilogy last year with the third book, The Blacksmith’s Bravery (long story), my wife Barb and I are now reading the other two volumes in order. Neither of us were disappointed in this one! My reviewing it here was a happy surprise. Although the covers of all three books feature gun-toting women, and a basic plot current of the trilogy is women learning to take responsibility for defending themselves and others, the heroine of the third book wasn’t actually called on to engage in any gun-fighting action. So I assumed the same would be the case here. But [at the risk of a mild “spoiler” –though for fans of this site, this will add interest rather than spoil it :-)], in this series opener, our heroine does need to step up to the plate with a Winchester. (Contrary to many fictional and movie depictions, rifles were used more for serious shooting in the Old West than six-guns). Despite that difference, though, both books have a lot of similarity in tone, content and style. Since I gave the concluding volume five stars on Goodreads, that’s a good thing!

In 1885 small-town Idaho, young Gert Dooley keeps house for her widowed brother, the town’s gunsmith. One thing she can do to help him is test fire the guns he repairs; and she’s gotten to be a crack shot over the years of doing this. When the town’s longtime sheriff is murdered in his office (the titular sheriff is his replacement), the usually quiet community is spooked; and a widowed storekeeper friend asks Gert to teach her how to use her late husband’s Colt, in case she needs it to protect herself or her business. There’s initially no thought of creating a club as such; but as other crimes follow and other women join in the lessons, the Ladies Shooting Club takes shape. Reactions among the community’s menfolk aren’t uniformly supportive –but not uniformly hostile either; stereotypical role expectations of female helplessness weren’t so ingrained in the late 19th-century West as they’d become later.

Despite the historical setting, the issue the novel poses is very contemporary, and hotly debated even today. Male chauvinists tend to see any use of weapons by females as transgressive of patriarchal norms. And while all feminists believe in “empowerment” for women in some sense, many of them either feel that pacifism is ideologically essential to true feminism, or believe that the State and its agents have an absolute monopoly on legitimate use of lethal force, which renders use of a gun for self-defense by ordinary citizens as nearly as bad as using it to attack an innocent. But another strand of feminism rejects that thinking, and views responsible and educated gun ownership as a legitimate tool of women’s empowerment. It’s not hard to deduce from this book what view of that matter Davis takes.

There’s nothing tract-like about this novel, however, any messages emerge naturally from the story itself. Christian faith plays a role in the lives of Gert and other characters, and of the town –the coming of a preacher and his wife to form a nondenominational community church is an important event, as it really was in many Western communities, where organized religion came more slowly than it did in the more easily-settled Eastern states– but the author isn’t “preachy” in her handling of this. The club is also a vehicle for creating female camaraderie and friendship that crosses social divides set by class, religion, and Victorian attitudes (it’ll eventually include both the preacher’s wife and a saloon owner and her girls), and some characters will have lessons to learn in that area.

But the main focus is on the question of what’s behind the sudden rash of arson and violence in the community. I’d describe this as a Western (and there’s horses, guns, a posse, and gun-play at the end), but it embodies very real characteristics of the mystery genre as well. (While I guessed the identity of the villain early on, I’m not sure many readers would –and you might have fun testing your own wits!) And in the background, we have regard and respect growing into love between a worthy man and woman.

Since this was the second book we read of the series, as Barb said, it was “like visiting old friends.” I’d recommend to new readers, though, that they read the books in order. And for us, it’s now on to our third book (which is actually the trilogy’s second), The Gunsmith’s Gallantry!

Author: Susan Page Davis
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Scorched Earth

  By

★★★
“Future imperfect.”

This workmanlike effort, if not particularly memorable, does at least cross two genres not frequently combined: the Western and the post-apocalypse movie. For it takes place in a world where global warming and other stuff have created a poisoned wasteland. Consequently, the currencies of choice are water purification tablets and silver, the latter being the raw ingredient in the air filtration masks which have become essential. Using vehicles powered by fossil fuels is totally outlawed, and those who do have rewards placed on their heads, attracting the attention of bounty hunters.

One such is Atticus Gage (Carano), who hears from former partner, Doc (Hannah) of an outlaw town, Defiance. This is run by Thomas Jackson (Robbins), whose bounty exceeds them all. Inevitably, Gage heads to the town to take Jackson out, adopting the identity of one of her previous targets, and insinuating herself into his posse. And equally inevitably, he turns out to have a connection to a dark incident in Gage’s past, when not plotting to re-open a nearby silver mine, the ore being dug out by pilgrims kidnapped off a nearby trail.

Carano has struggled to repeat the success of her (effective) feature debut, Haywire, with cinematic supporting parts in the likes of Deadpool and Fast and Furious 6 alternating with straight-to-video starring roles, such as In the Blood. These have been best when she has been allowed to concentrate on the physical aspects which are her strength, and the same goes here, right from the first moment we see her, riding into shot and dragging a coffin behind her, in a nice nod to the original Django. However, if she’s ever going to go further, she needs to show significantly more development as an actress. Haywire was now seven years ago – not that you’d know it from her performance here, especially when put alongside someone like Hannah.

I did like the overall setting, despite odd gaps in logic: sometimes people need to wear masks, at other times they don’t. It’s a universe which I’d have been interested to see explored some more, perhaps in an extended format, such as a TV series. This could have answered questions such as, where are those pilgrims going, anyway? I also appreciated how Gage has the ability to be a complete bad-ass, on more than one occasion showing absolutely no qualms about shiving or shooting those who might be about to blow the gaff on her assumed identity.

The tone is likely best summed up by a sequence in which Gage finds herself sealed into her own coffin and tossed off the side of a cliff. Naturally, she survives, staggering back to Doc, who patches her up, allowing the pair of them to return to Defiance, for a final grandstand(ish) shoot-out. It’s all thoroughly implausible, yet somehow, is in keeping with the pulp/comic-book aesthetic for which the makers seem to be aiming. I can’t say it’s entirely, or even largely, successful there. Yet it’s just enough to leave me back on the hook for whatever Carano does next, hoping for better.

Dir: Peter Howitt
Star: Gina Carano, Ryan Robbins, John Hannah, Stephanie Bennett

Wynonna Earp: season one

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★★★
“Wynonna the Demon Slayer”

After a long absence, Wynonna Earp (Scrofano) returns to her home town of Purgatory, near the Rockies. There, we discover the truth about the death of her father and disappearance of her sister, events which precipitated Wynonna’s departure. Turns out the great-great-granddaughter of the legendary Wyatt Earp has a supernatural duty to fulfill, using her ancestor’s equally legendary 16-inch barrel “Peacemaker” revolver. Wyatt kept demons known as “revenants” in check, and the mission has been passed down the family line since, with Wynonna the current incumbent. Fortunately, mystical borders keep the revenants within the “Ghost River Triangle,” and she has the help of Deputy Marshal Xavier Dolls (Anderson), an agent in the “Black Badge” division of the US Marshals Service; Doc Holliday (Rozon), the now-immortal former friend of Wyatt; and Wynonna’s kid sister, Waverly (Provost-Chalkley).

Yeah, as the tag-line above suggest, there’s more than an echo of Buffy here, from Wynonna being the unwilling “chosen one”, through Purgatory being a hot-bed of supernatural activity (or “Hell Mouth”?), and the associated “Scooby Gang” who help out the heroine. Doc is a parallel for Angel, being a somewhat ambivalent immortal who has an on-again, off-again relationship with Wynonna. Dolls is Giles, the sensible adult of the group. And Waverly is a lumpy combination of Giles (research skills), Dawn (bratty little sister) and Willow (gratuitous lesbian tendencies). I’m not sure how many of these similarities come from Beau Smith’s comic which is the source here. It first appeared in 1996, when Buffy was still a failed movie, and not yet the successful TV series it would become. But the showrunner admits, when pitching Wynonna, she would describe it as “Buffy meets Justified.”

So, if you’re looking for originality, you are far better off elsewhere, certainly. That said, the horror-Western is some way from being an over-familiar genre, and the obvious influences certainly do not mean it is without merit or appeal. There has been a real shortage of action heroine shows on American television – which leaves me happy to see, even one as derivative as this. I particularly liked Scofrano, who brings a cynical world-weariness to her mid-twenties character.The show also does a good job of disseminating information, striking a nice balance between revealing its secrets, and keeping the audience guessing. The middle episodes do degenerate a bit into ‘Occult Monster of the Week’ territory, yet the writers redeem themselves with a strong final arc that sets the stage nicely, and not too obviously, for the second season.

Wynonna [a spelling which looks plain weird, with at least one N too many] takes to her destiny with gleeful abandon, dispatching revenants with enthusiasm. It’s refreshing to see a heroine who doesn’t agonize endlessly about dispatching the enemy – even if in this case, it’s probably because they are already dead. Overall, I think the show will likely go as far as Scrofano can take it. If it takes advantage of the chance to improve, and does so to the same extent Buffy did (the cast there didn’t grow into their characters until perhaps the third series), it’ll certainly be worth another look.

Creator: Emily Andras
Star: Melanie Scrofano, Shamier Anderson, Tim Rozon, Dominique Provost-Chalkley

The Belle Starr Story

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★★
“A blandly over-cooked platter of spaghetti”

This is virtually unique, in being almost the only spaghetti Western with a female lead, and certainly unique in being the only one directed by a woman. Unfortunately, beyond these novelty aspects, it’s really not very good. Indeed, the overall attitude on view here is so remarkably retrograde, the gender of its director would likely be a surprise, if you didn’t know what it was going in. The film certainly keeps it quiet, disguising Wertmüller – who, seven years later, would become the first woman ever to receive a Best Director Oscar nomination, for Seven Beauties – under the pseudonym of “Nathan Wich”. Whose brother is called Sam, presumably. 

The anonymity is perhaps because she wasn’t originally intended to direct. She took over from Piero Cristofani, some sources say as a favour to leading lady Martinelli. Wertmüller then rewrote the script to reduce Woods’s role, with whom she reportedly had on-set battles. A bit like the more recent, yet similarly cursed Western, Jane Got a Gun, it’s perhaps remarkable the makers managed to come up with a finished product at all. And also similarly, the behind-the-scenes saga is likely a good deal more interesting than said finished product.

There’s no denying Martinelli looks the part, as renegade, gambler and outlaw Belle Starr. She falls for the charms of fellow poker player Larry Blackie (Eastman), and they begin a tempestuous romance, which my wife sarcastically described as “Hit me! Kiss me! Rape me! Love me!” It’s this aspect which seems especially at odds with the rest of Wertmüller’s filmography, much of which is populated by strongly feminist characters. Here, Belle seems both to crave Blackie’s attentions and loathe him with a passion. She declines an offer to bring her on board for his planned robbery of a diamond shipment, instead setting about assembling her own crew, which will beat him to the loot.

Before we get to that, there’s a long, long flashback, covering Starr’s life to that point. In its entirety. In real-time. Or perhaps it just seems that way. It certainly brings the story grinding to a halt. We see how she was brought up by an abusive foster uncle, from whom she was rescued by the outlaw Cole Harvey (Woods). He tries to rape her – yeah, you may be forgiven for detecting a bit of a theme here – and is killed for his pains, which helps set Belle off on her life of crime, poker and questionable romantic choices.

Beyond Martinelli’s look, there’s very little to recommend this, particularly for the first hour – it does pick up somewhat late, as Belle and Larry simultaneously stage their robbery attempts. Until then, even getting beyond the dubious sexual politics on view, this is poorly written, and just not very interesting. Wertmüller can’t even shoot a poker game properly; she’ll show you the cards, and half the time, you don’t know whose they are. Sad though it to say this, you can certainly understand why it was a case of “one and done,” both for spaghetti Western heroines, and Wertmüller’s genre efforts.

Dir: Lina Wertmüller
Star: Elsa Martinelli, George Eastman, Robert Woods, Francesca Righini

Molly and the Gold Baron, by Stephen Overholser

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆

Stephen Overholser is the son of acclaimed Western author Wayne Overholser, who’s followed in his father’s footsteps as a writer of Westerns; both father and son have been Spur Award winners. The younger Overholser created the character of Molly Owens as the protagonist of one of his early novels, Molly and the Confidence Man (1975), and went on to write five more novels featuring her. Orphaned young, Molly and her now-deceased brother survived a rough childhood on their own; after he came West, she answered an ad and went to work for the Fenton Detective Agency, which is fictional, but modeled on the real-life Pinkerton Agency –which actually did employ women detectives, Kate Warne becoming the first in 1856.

Overholser set much of his work in his native Colorado; Molly’s based in Denver, and this tale is set in the real-life Colorado mining boom town of Cripple Creek in ca. 1893. That setting is actually drawn with considerable accuracy, and the depiction of the community’s history and labor troubles in that period reflects actual realities, with some license and changing of names. (I’ll give Overholser credit for doing serious research.) While I wouldn’t describe the author’s characterizations as sharp, Molly comes across as a kind person who cares about justice, as well as both brave and capable. She approaches her detective work with good observation skills and intuition (and isn’t above picking a lock or two if that’s what it takes to hunt for evidence).

Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, debuting in 1982 in A Is for Alibi, is usually considered literature’s first gun-packing female detective who could handle rough stuff if the baddies wanted to throw it at her. Yet Molly preceded her by seven years and is no shrinking violet where combat is concerned, either with her double-action Colt or with her fists and feet (and she can deliver a pretty nasty head-butt as well); she just was never noticed by mystery-genre critics because her venue is in a different genre. Here, her assignment calls for her to get to the bottom of a pregnant prostitute’s bogus paternity suit against a newly-rich prospector; but the case soon morphs into an unauthorized murder investigation, in the context of a labor dispute between mine owners and mine workers that threatens to become a blood bath. (Some on both sides are up for illegal violence, but the mine owners and their thugs are the more dangerously violent.)

As is true of some other works in this genre that I’ve read, the author’s prose style is mediocre, adequate but uninspired, workmanlike pulp that does the job in an undistinguished way; he tells the story and allows you to picture the action and settings, but this isn’t a novel you’d read for scintillating dialogue, vivid turns of phrase, telling details, or description that soars and sings. His plotting is on a similar level; towards the end, a couple of characters make some decisions that serve the storyline, but struck me as dubiously likely to have been made had this been a real-life narrative in the same situation. The mystery element isn’t very deeply mysterious in the long run.

Despite its flaws,though, I basically liked the book as passing light entertainment, and liked and admired the heroine for her genuine good qualities. Personally, I won’t bother seeking out the rest of the series; but if you’re a Western fan who doesn’t demand much from your books and read for recreation, you could certainly pick a lot worse books, with a lot worse messages. And at 172 pages, it’s a relatively short read, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Note: Bad language, of the d-word/h-word sort, is minimal and Molly herself pretty clean in her own speech; I wouldn’t guarantee that she never lets a cuss word slip under stress (I don’t have the book in front of me to check) but she certainly doesn’t make it a noticeable habit. There are three explicit sex scenes. (They can be skipped over with no loss of anything.) However, this isn’t a romance as such, nor is it a trashy “adult Western”.

Author: Stephen Overholser
Publisher: Bantam, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Rowdy Girls

  By

★★★
“If Andy Sidaris directed a Western.”

rowdygirlsThe self-awareness of the film’s own silliness is clear, virtually from the start in which a singing cowboy – referred to in the credits as a minstrel – strolls through the countryside, crooning his ballad of the titular ladies. He pops up intermittently throughout to narrate, and it does a good job of setting the tone: clearly, this is not intended, in any way, to be a serious look at historical life in America. It is, very much, gyno-centric: beyond the leads, this was also written by two women, including India Allen, who was the 1988 Playmate of the Year. Not just a pretty face, then.

The three characters at the center have different stories, that all end up taking them to the same place. Velvet McKenzie (Tweed) has bailed out of her life in a bordello, with a travel-bag full of cash, and is travelling disguised as a nun. Sarah Foster (Brooks) is similarly making a break, fleeing an arranged marriage and heading for San Francisco, on the same wagon as Velvet. But in their way is Mick (Strain), member of an outlaw gang and the leader’s lover; the group rob the stagecoach, taking both Velvet and Sarah hostage. The attack is interrupted by the local sheriff, until Mick slides a knife between his ribs; that just sets his younger brother, Joe Pepper (Varga) on the trail of both the criminals and their captives.

No shortage of curvy nudity here, as you’d expect given the cast, though it certainly qualifies as being at the tasteful end of the spectrum. There is probably more of a plot than you would expect too, with loyalties and alliances shifting over the course of the 87 minutes, and despite its B-movie origins, the production values are better than certain Troma movies I could mention [though I’m not entirely sure about the credibility of some of the costumes, which appear more Victoria’s Secret than 19th-century Western America!] Strain is particularly fun to watch, not least because her 6’1″ frame towers over some of the male cast, and her attitude is equally imposing, but Tweed, well into her forties at the time, is by no means outclassed.

Sure, the makers of this have set their sights low, not appearing too interested in offering up much more than a soft-core exercise in historical inaccuracy. Adopting a tongue-in-cheek approach to the whole thing was thus likely a wise movie, effectively defusing most of the (numerous) critical arguments which could be made against it. Manage your expectations, therefore, and those expectations will be met. For as soft-core exercises in historical inaccuracy go, you could certainly do an awful lot worse. Below, courtesy of Troma, you’ll find the whole thing, so you can judge for yourself!

Dir: Steven Nevius
Star: Shannon Tweed, Julie Strain, Deanna Brooks, Richie Varga

Calamity Jane’s Revenge

  By

★★
“Talk is cheap. VERY cheap…”

calamityTwo stars might actually be a bit generous, on an objective scale. But I confess to possessing a soft spot for low-budget films made with passion, even if the results fall short. The most obvious deficiency here is the location shooting. Outside of an opening scene with a few ramshackle houses, the entire film takes place in a forest. Seriously, the closest thereafter we get to seeing any other buildings, is two people leaning up against a fence… in the middle of the woods. Maybe they should have called it Calamity Jane: The Wilderness Years, and set viewer expectations appropriately.

It’s a revenge story, which we join in progress, with the husband of Jane (Ryan), no mean legend himself, Wild Bill Hickok, having already been gunned down. She’s now on the trail of the men responsible, who have split up and need to be tracked down individually. Complicating matters, one of the culprits is now accompanied by a kidnap victim, Fay (Gomez), whom Jane initially attempts to leave behind, but eventually agrees to help out. Additionally, Jane is being tracked by the new sheriff of Deadwood, along with renowned tracker, Colorado Charlie Utter (former WWE star Snow, which was an unexpected surprise). Will she be able to finish her mission of vengeance before the forces of law catch up with her?

And, more importantly, will the viewer be able to finish this movie, before unconsciousness catches up with them? Because the pacing on this leaves a great deal to be desired, without any real sense of building toward a climax. The film instead ambles its way through the trees, giving you two minutes of action, then 15 minutes of chit-chat. Rinse. Repeat. Forest. It’s not actually badly acted: Ryan has some presence, and Snow is certainly no worse than some others from the WWE who have stepped in front of the camera (looking at you, John Cena…). But the paucity of the resources available also leads to action more befitting a school playground, in which when people get shot, they fall over clutching their chest, without ever any apparent injury. Could the budget truly not stretch to a couple of bottles of fake blood?

On the technical side, it’s has its moments, with some impressive drone (I’m guessing) shots, capturing the epic grandeur of the mountains. These do, however, seem somewhat at odd with the static approach taken for the rest of the film. Couto seems to have tried his hand at various genres over the years, from horror to family films; while I guess he’s to be commended for that, it perhaps helps explains why this feels so generic. If you’re short on budget, you need to make up for this in other, inexpensive ways, from imagination to risk-taking. Unfortunately, Couto appears more concerned with playing it safe, and there’s precious little here that will stick in the viewer’s brain past the end credits.

Dir: Henrique Couto
Star: Erin R. Ryan, Al Snow, Julia Gomez, Adam Scott Clevenger

Seven Vengeful Women

  By

★★½
“The good, the bad and the pretty.”

7-mujeresA wagon train on its way West to California is besieged by multiple waves of Apaches. Between attacks, the seven women among the settlers are hidden in a nearby cave, but the next assault proves terminal, and the women are left, alone and deep in enemy territory. The only hope for this band of largely unprepared women, is to strike out across a hostile landscape. They’ll need to cross 100 miles between them and the nearest settlement, Fort Lafayette, while fending off further native attacks.

This 1966 film is an early example of a “Europudding,” being a co-production between Spain, Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein(!). There are three directors credited, though Parolini’s name appears to have been simply to get Italian funding, and Pink was apparently the main man behind the camera. The results are only sporadically effective, being hampered by characters and actions which are often little more than clichés, on all sides. They actually use the line, “Never turn your back on an Indian,” and I literally LOL’d when the settlers formed their wagons into a circle, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen that done in a film, except as a parody.

The star is former Oscar-winner Baxter, who plays Mary-Anne, the de facto leader of the group, and delivers a solid performance. Though as action-heroines, I was probably more impressed with the Grimaldi Sisters, a circus act (played by Como and Adriana Ambesi) whose skills help save the group on multiple occasions – there’s a running joke about these abilities inevitably being obtained from previous sideshow boyfriends. Most of the rest don’t make much impression, and while trying to avoid spoilers, the mortality rate is so low that the Apaches don’t present much of a threat. While there are some dark hints about the women being wanted alive, this was the mid-sixties, so hints are all you’ll get, and the whole thing is rather too gentle for its own good.

That said, the women develop a harder edge over the course of proceedings. The first time they repel an Indian attack, the victim they capture is kept alive, at least until he escapes. By the end, they’re ruthlessly clubbing natives to death with their rifles, in the closest the film goes to a genuinely disturbing sequence [Look, I saw Bone Tomahawk recently. My “genuinely disturbing” scale got entirely re-calibrated, as far as the Western genre goes] Second spot likely goes to the Apache victim whose body is found, mostly for Mary-Anne’s stern instruction that nobody should look under her clothes.

But this is the kind of film where the heroines start off their hundred-mile trek in long skirts. Even for the time, that seems a stretch, and is an unfortunate precursor to the rest of the movie. It’s not a bad idea, and the leads are fine too; the problem here is a script which hasn’t aged well

Dir: Gianfranco Parolini, Rudolf Zehetgruber, Sidney W. Pink
Star: Anne Baxter, Maria Perschy, Gustavo Rojo, Rossella Como
a.k.a. The Tall Women

The Ballad of Cat Ballou, by Roy Chanslor

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

catballouMy generation, raised on 1950s and early 60s TV, tends to think of the classic Western genre as a male preserve, where females were the gallant cowboys’ ever-so-meek love interests or damsels in distress, but where men wore the guns and did all the shooting, cow-punching and heavy work. This reflected a moment in American pop culture, post-World War II, when the cultural and socio-political elite of that day consciously cultivated a faux “traditional” cult of female home-bound domesticity and passivity (to encourage the myriads of “Rosie the Riveters” to butt out of the workforce and free up the jobs for the returning male ex-soldiers). But that state of affairs never reflected the actual reality of the Old West, a harsh and dangerous land that often demanded that both sexes step up to plate and take their share of both fighting and strenuous work. The work of earlier Western genre writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs (The Bandit of Hell’s Bend) and pulp magazine authors like Les Savage Jr. often reflected that reality; and though written in 1956, this novel by Roy Chanslor (1899-1964), with its strong heroine, stands in that older tradition.

This is not, however, a novel of nonstop, slam-bang action from start to finish. On the contrary, Chanslor begins his story with his protagonist “Cat” (short for Catherine –she’s named after her mom) Ballou’s birth. (The titular folk “Ballad of Cat Ballou” that he quotes from, there and throughout the book, is completely fictional, as are the characters; but it imparts a mythic, larger-than-life quality to the narrative.) Then he goes back before that, to the days before her parents met, to help us understand the history of her family, the ill will between the Ballous and the Fields, and the nature of the world she was born into, in which the law was sometimes simply a perverted tool of the wealthy and powerful for plundering the weak, and where “outlaws” were sometimes only principled people fighting for their just rights. Our setting is Wyoming Territory; the localities of the main action are fictional, but supposedly in southern Wyoming, from clues in the text. Textual clues also suggest a date of ca. 1870 for Cat’s birth, and ca. 1886-87 for the crisis that ultimately confronts her. (The passing reference to territorial governor Ed Donaldson, however, isn’t a clue –no such name appears in the real-life roster of Wyoming’s governors!)

Chanslor uses an omniscient, third-person narrative voice, and a prose style that’s not unlike that of other Western writers of his generation –workmanlike, dignified without being stilted. He gives dialogue an authentic, colloquial feel, without resorting to heavy dialect. Not much attention is given to description of the natural world; the author’s focus is on the human world, and the thoughts, feelings and relationships of his characters. He’s also very good at creating an entire array of lifelike, nuanced characters, on both sides of the law (no simplistic “virtuous good guys in white hats and evil bad guys in black hats” here!). As in life, the storyline includes both tragedy and triumph. There’s violent death, and gun-play, in places (despite the cover art on the edition I read, Cat doesn’t wear or shoot a Colt here –but she’s as fast-shooting and as accurate with a rifle as any man); but it’s handled matter-of-factly, and as in the real world, it’s over quickly. (The results are what lingers.)

catballou2As is often the case with fiction that shows human beings involved in intense conflicts with life or death stakes, and making decisions about the use of deadly force, this novel brings to life very real questions about right and wrong, the relative primacy of law and order vs. justice, the moral obligations of humans to each other, the possibly conflicting claims of justice and mercy, the merits of being “fenced in” vs. freedom (and what exactly constitutes “freedom”), and what constitutes honorable behavior in difficult situations. Chanslor tends to point up right and wrong behavior by example rather than by exposition, though he does at times use Old Doc, Cat’s maternal grandfather, and Martha Babcock as mouthpieces for his opinions. In general, though, it’s clear that his own moral orientation is basically that of the traditional Code of the West, with a high value on respect for others’ rights, fair play, fidelity to one’s word, courage, and loyalty to family and friends. His attitude toward religion is aloof (Old Doc advocates reading Scripture “for the sound, not the sense”), but he’s respectful toward his preacher character, who’s definitely one of the good guys.

Romantic love plays a strong role in the tales of both Cat’s parents and her own story. In both cases, we’re dealing with situations of what could be disparaged as “insta-love.” As I’ve noted in other reviews, in pre-modern settings, what we think of as unrealistic “insta-love” could very often be true to life; men and women who didn’t expect to “date,” and who wanted matrimony rather than being afraid of it, learned to size each other up pretty quickly. Frankie and Catherine Ballou’s marriage, IMO, fits that pattern. Cat and her man’s union, though, strains the bounds of probability even for 19th-century attractions; and some of Cat’s attitudes and actions are those of a hormone-driven teen (she’s 16-17 at the time of her main story), not a responsible adult. I also felt Chanslor’s attitude was too cavalier in blithely excusing one character’s adultery when his wife was recovering from a miscarriage –I can understand the psychology of sexual deprivation, and don’t discount the value of forgiveness where penitence is genuine, but I don’t feel it’s “just being a normal male.” These points were what cost the book a star. In the main, though, the messages of the book promote sexual respect for women and glorify committed love in faithful marriage. Parts of the novel have an undercurrent of frank sensuality; but it’s monogamous sensuality that it celebrates.

I found the book a gripping read; there are moments of extreme suspense, and concern for the fate of characters you care about, and toward the end I read for longer than normal because I had to finish it! In some respects, this would actually make a great book for discussion groups to read together, because it can pose a lot to think about and discuss.

Note: Readers should be warned that the book has some d- and h-word bad language, and a fair amount of misuse of Divine names as well.

Author: Roy Chanslor
Publisher: New American Library, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)